Brooms and rakes of various kinds are known. Their performance in terms of sweeping or raking efficiency varies widely as do their methods and costs of manufacture, their aesthetic appearance, their versatility of use, their durability and other characteristics.
Republic of South Africa Patents No's 82/6208 and 83/7181 disclose a broom head comprising an integrally moulded back portion and bristles. Socket means defining a socket can also be integrally moulded or can be attached after moulding. They also disclose an integrally moulded ridge which provides reinforcement.
Netherlands patent No 80 0 0471 discloses a broom comprising a broom head with a handle and at least one set of bristles. The head is formed in plastic and has the bristle cast in. It has an integral resilient socket for clamping on the end of the handle. The socket is preferably so arranged that air can escape when fitting the handle but is prevented from re-entering to resist removal. The head may have a scraper or wiper blade parallel to the row of bristles.
The aforementioned brooms suffer from the disadvantages of either poor durability or poor mouldability in an injection moulding process, or both. In an injection moulding process for instance, if all the parts of the broom are to be moulded integrally, different parts serving different functions and requiring different properties, have to be simultaneously moulded from the same material, and these sometimes conflicting objectives are difficult to achieve in practice.
In addition, some conventional brooms suffer from the poor durability of the connection provided between the head of the broom and the broomstick or handle. It is important that the aforementioned connection is sufficiently strong to absorb the shocks of everyday use of the broom without the head coming loose, yet at the same time the connection must not be so permanent that replacement of the head or the broomstick becomes impossible. Also, the cost of manufacture of the connection must not be too high.
There also exists a continuous need for the improvement of the sweeping performance of brooms. In this context it should be noted that, in order for a broom to be able to efficiently sweep small particles, it should have a large number of relatively thin bristles and in order for it to be able to efficiently sweep larger particles, it should have a sufficient number of relatively thick and more rigid bristles. Conventional brooms do not attempt to achieve both these objectives simultaneously.